{"id":10902,"date":"2015-02-28T12:23:10","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T17:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10902"},"modified":"2015-02-28T14:04:33","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T19:04:33","slug":"br-when-the-wind-blows-1986","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10902","title":{"rendered":"BR: When the Wind Blows (1986)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"WhenTheWindBlows_BR\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Near-Perfect<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>Twilight Time<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0All<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0November 11, 2014<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Drama \/ Nuclear Holocaust<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0A retired couple follow the government’s 14 day survival plan after a nuclear bomb explodes in Britain, but they’re unable to grasp the reality of being mislead, and confront their inevitable, tragic fates.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Audio Commentary with Producer-Film Historian Nick Redman and First Assistant Editor Joe Fordham \/ 1986 featurette: \u201cThe Making of When the Wind Blows\u201d (24:18) \/ Interview with author Raymond Briggs (13:50) \/ Bonus 2010 documentary feature film: \u201cJimmy Murakami: Non-Alien (77:41) \/ 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/ Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Preamble<\/strong><\/p>\n

After producing an animated version of Raymond Briggs\u2019 beautiful, now-classic, all-ages Christmas weepie The Snowman<\/a><\/b> (1982), producer John Coates set his sights on something more in tune with the more timely subject of nuclear war \/ utter annihilation, as the eighties seemed ripe with stark dramas meant to provoke theatrical and TV audiences into realizing the bomb of today was more deadly than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.<\/p>\n

The topic what survives after a nuclear attack was the focus of the U.S. teleplay The Day After<\/b> (1983), and a family\u2019s slow disintegration occupied the running time of the PBS drama Testament<\/b> (1983). A more \u2018fanciful\u2019 take was found in WarGames<\/b> (1983), where teenage Matthew Broderick hacks into a military computer and has no idea he\u2019s playing a real-world version of \u201cGlobal Thermonuclear War\u201d \u2013 not a game, but a simulation that\u2019s may set off return strikes from the Soviets.<\/p>\n

The grimmest dramas every produced remain exclusively British, and they\u2019re part of a sub-sub-genre I tend to brand as British Bleakism. The message inherent to these films, which can span other classic genres, is very clear: the world is<\/i> going to utter hell, and there\u2019s not a bloody thing anyone can do about it. Good luck<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s answer to ABC\u2019s overhyped teleplay was Mick Jackson\u2019s Threads<\/a><\/b> (1984), an attempt to show citizens that the government\u2019s little booklets on protecting oneself and family against a descending bomb with doors and mattresses is utter bullshit, and the world that emerges the following day is almost unlivable. Language, technology, and civilization are fractured, and humanity is reset to grunting, slurring Neanderthals who can\u2019t even comprehend the process of giving birth.<\/p>\n

Jackson, however, wasn\u2019t the first director to tackle the idiotic governmental lies designed to calm the scared and the ignorant. That honor belongs to Peter Watkins, whose The War Game<\/a><\/b> was so stark and assaultive in chastising governmental nonsense, the short film was banned by its maker, the BBC.<\/p>\n

(In the commentary track that accompanies Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray edition, WTWB\u2019s first assistant editor Joe Fordham recalls incorrectly the film\u2019s title and director. Peter Watkins was a skilled provocateur and brilliant filmmaker, deliberately blurring the lines between drama and documentary with vivid recreations that happened to have been captured by a adjunct TV crew. After emigrating to Canada, Watkins directed the epic 14 & \u00bd hour, anti-nuke documentary series Resan<\/b> \/ The Journey<\/b> in 1987. Project X\u2019s Oliver Groom<\/a> had plans to release the series, but complexities of the versions, source materials, and study package crafted by Watkins went into stasis. The series remains unavailable on DVD.)<\/p>\n

With Threads<\/b> being the most striking attempt to make it brutally clear a nuclear war is unwinnable, unsurvivable in gritty, emotionally gory terms, it\u2019s interesting that Briggs would take on the challenge to edify adults using his gift for softer images and compelling characters, hence his 1982 graphic novel WTWB.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0When the Wind Blows (1986)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In production for 2 years, the film version is a graphic novel come to life, aimed at adults who perhaps felt the nuclear madness wasn\u2019t as grievous as it appeared in the media. The archived interview with Briggs has the author admitting the characters of Hilda and Jim Bloggs (voiced by Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills) were patterned after his parents, a working class couple who survived WWII, and carried on a quaint nostalgia for the heroism and stiff upper lip of their generation.<\/p>\n

Redman and Fordham touch upon the film\u2019s reception in America, where the couple and the film\u2019s dry black humour were greeted with a measure of puzzlement: to American (and perhaps non-Commonwealth audiences) the Bloggs seem rather dim, but in the separate interview featurette (ported over, with the making-of featurette, from the 2005 Region 2 DVD), Briggs clarifies the couple are just ‘simple,’ carrying on and obeying official rules in a manner of calm and reason that’s reflective of their generation.<\/p>\n

It is admittedly a little curious to see Jim constantly reassuring Hilda that if they follow the post-nuclear guidebook, things will work out; the world will pick itself up and bring back some level of normalcy; and somehow little bits of daily life will endure, whether it\u2019s the morning paper delivery, the return of electricity, or their son eventually getting in touch with them.<\/p>\n

The couple\u2019s refuge is an \u2018inner core,\u2019 built from a set of doors angled like a tubular lean-to against the wall, and pillows to protect them from any blast shrapnel. Jim repeatedly consults his official manuals to verify they\u2019re following the correct paths to survive in a post-nuclear world, but their absolute naivete coupled with the obvious hopelessness of the post-bomb effects guarantee they will not make it past a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Their actions \u2013 drinking \u2018rainwater\u2019 and reposing in lawn chairs under\u00a0 a cloudy sky with nuclear ash in the breeze \u2013 aren\u2019t portraits of generational stupidity, but a scathing attack on the government\u2019s published quackery that simplified the horrors of a new kind of warfare. It\u2019s the same stance taken by Watkins in 1965: even if you could survive a nuclear attack, you wouldn\u2019t want to, because what\u2019s left for humanity is worse than instant death.<\/p>\n

The Bloggs\u2019 tragic lives \u2013 it\u2019s pretty obvious by the midpoint they\u2019re going to die slowly \u2013 are told through beautiful, almost prosaic animation with some edgy qualities and inventive solutions to budgetary quandaries. Most impressive is the 3-D look of some shots due to the animated characters being overlaid onto 35mm film stills of their house; when there\u2019s a panning or tracking movement, it\u2019s actually stop-motion film instead of fully animated backgrounds.<\/p>\n

The colours in this HD transfer are especially vivid \u2013 the reds really glow \u2013 and the blending of slightly different animation styles in a few flashbacks aren\u2019t as jarring as Briggs may have felt. The Bloggs\u2019 wedding and wartime montages are very affecting, and the nuclear blast sequence is a great mix of live action, stop-motion, and animated drawings, of which the latter were \u2018dirtied up\u2019 to give the chilling sequence extra gravitas.<\/p>\n

Within the film\u2019s slight stereo mix, Roger Waters\u2019 score (isolated in a separate music & effects track) mostly works \u2013 there\u2019s a dated quality to some cues, especially a loping, bumbling theme, and the instrumentation is very mid-eighties \u2013 but it manages to support the characters to their end, which director Jimmy T. Murakami handles with great sensitivity.<\/p>\n

Redman and Fordham discuss Murakami\u2019s various skills as an animator, especially in deepening character details and little scene nuances, but it\u2019s his respect for the characters and the film\u2019s anti-nuke message that really distinguishes the film. Moreover, in their new post-nuclear holocaust world, the Bloggs behave as they would in peace time, and one wonders if they’re better off being \u00a0simple-minded, hoping for the best when so many aspects of their physical lives, including themselves, continues to degenerate, thwarting their facile expectations and not following the romantic survival tales of 1940s warfare.<\/p>\n

To contextualize the film, the extras include the aforementioned commentary \u2013 one of Redman\u2019s best, and packed with a lot of production history that will please animation fans and animators alike \u2013 and a vintage making-of doc, which seems almost jarring today, watching animators draw every meticulous cell instead of rendering the images on a bank of workstations.<\/p>\n

WTWB was fully hand-crafted, and alongside the drawn elements, there\u2019s attention given to the stop-motion cinematography, live-action shots, and the brief video news footage that starts the film.\u00a0A young Murakami appears in the vintage doc, very happy and proud of his association, and his involvement with the film is further detailed in S\u00e9 Merry Doyle\u2019s 2010 feature-length doc on the Oscar-Nominated animator who left America and settled in Ireland.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Murakami: Non-Alien<\/b><\/a> is a highly personal reflection on the emotional beats in his life rather than his working career as an animator, and ultimately builds towards Murakami’s decision to return to the U.S., and travel with his sister and brother\u00a0to Tulelake<\/a>,\u00a0where they spent four years in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII.<\/p>\n

While Muramaki\u2019s film career is outlined in the film, it\u2019s really secondary to his return to the U.S. and how the camp affected his family, if not kept the anger and distrust seething within the animator, and his continuing inability to forgive the U.S. Government and lose a sense of betrayal.<\/p>\n

Doyle’s film ultimately becomes an elegy for the victims of the Japanese-Americans sent to the camps, and a subtle political statement on the trampling of basic civic rights, the need for restitution, and the legacy that carries on in further generations. Murakami isn\u2019t wholly bitter, but the anger of losing four years of his life and never feeling fully whole over the following decades bleed from the screen.<\/p>\n

Doyle\u2019s film is ripe with gorgeous images \u2013 it\u2019s a beautiful HD production \u2013 and respectful in spite of capturing many emotionally intimate moments, it\u2019s more a film about personal triumph. Murakami\u2019s very humble about his long career, and Doyle uses extracts from the animator\u2019s film work very sparsely; with the exception of Breath<\/b> (1967), The Snowman<\/strong>,\u00a0and WTWB, no other work is excerpted. That may disappoint Murakami’s fans, but in place of anecdotes and film clips, the Doyle offers an emotional human story of personal survival.<\/p>\n

Murakami\u2019s best-known credits include directing Roger Corman\u2019s Star Wars<\/b>\u2019 riff Battle Beyond the Stars<\/b> (1980), supervising work on the Coates-produced The Snowman<\/b> (1982) a segment in Heavy Metal<\/b> (1981), and additional animation work in Free to Be\u2026 You & Me<\/b> (1974) and the classic series The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe<\/b> (1988). Murakami passed away in 2014 at the age of 80.<\/p>\n

Some of his animated shorts are archived on YouTube, including Breath<\/b><\/a> (1967) and\u00a0Death of a Bullet<\/strong><\/a> (1979). A series of interviews conducted in 2010 in which the animator discusses his work is also archived in multiple parts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Film and TV adaptations of Raymond Briggs’ work include\u00a0The Snowman<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(1982),\u00a0When the Wind Blows<\/strong>\u00a0(1986),\u00a0Father Christmas<\/strong>\u00a0(1992),\u00a0The Bear<\/strong>\u00a0(1998),\u00a0Ivor the Invisible\u00a0<\/strong>(2001),\u00a0Fungus the Bogeyman<\/strong>\u00a0(2004), and\u00a0The Snowman and the Snowdog<\/strong>\u00a0(2012).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB \u00a0<\/a>— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After producing an animated version of Raymond Briggs\u2019 beautiful, now-classic, all-ages Christmas weepie The Snowman (1982), John Coates set his sights on something more in tune with the more timely subject of nuclear war \/ utter annihilation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3456,3455,3453,3457,3459,3458,3460,3454],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2PQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10902"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10951,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902\/revisions\/10951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}